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Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Azure Monitor's ROI is mixed: some value its cost-effectiveness and insights, while others question its expense.
Sentiment score
6.8
SolarWinds NPM is praised for reducing costs, offering quick ROI, and enhancing network management with reliable alerts and reporting.
Azure Monitor helps prevent impacts on their system.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Azure Monitor's customer service is praised for responsiveness, especially with premium support, but can improve on general knowledge and speed.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM's customer service is praised, but technical support varies, with some users noting slow responses and availability issues.
However, the second-line support is good.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Users end up getting no resolution from their team because they're outsourced vendors, and they don't have deeper expertise over any of the products they are referring to.
Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC
I would rate the support for Azure Monitor as a seven.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Regarding technical support from SolarWinds, I find it excellent.
Assistant Manager at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Azure Monitor provides scalable solutions for businesses, supports auto-scaling, integrates with tools, but requires careful cost management.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM efficiently scales in large environments, but may require extra polling engines and face complex licensing challenges.
With APM, you can go heavy or you can go light. It just depends on what you want, what your use case is, and how reactive you want to be to system load or resilient to failure.
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Azure Monitor is very scalable; there are no issues with scalability for different kinds of businesses.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Azure Monitor is highly stable and reliable, though less agile, with high user ratings and potential cost concerns.
Sentiment score
7.5
SolarWinds NPM is praised for stability, with resource allocation and documentation adherence mitigating most upgrade-related issues.
Azure Monitor is working fine, yet I face a costing issue as if there are a lot of logs collected in the workspace or in the center, it becomes very costly.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
For stability, I rate SolarWinds NPM as a ten, which is the best.
Assistant Manager at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Monitor struggles with user-friendliness, integration, complexity, multi-cloud support, proactive monitoring, and requires enhanced usability and cost transparency.
SolarWinds NPM requires enhancements in analytics, scalability, UI, security, integration, customization, monitoring, automation, stability, and cost-effectiveness.
If Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at least to log storage, I can fix the logs without syncing with Log Analytics Workspace and Sentinel.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that the actual cost of the Kubernetes cluster was less than the cost they were incurring for Azure Monitor.
Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC
The challenges with Azure Monitor are that it's initially complex to set up because you need multiple components.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Azure Monitor offers cost-effective variable pricing, but careful management is essential to avoid high expenses for enterprise users.
SolarWinds NPM offers a flexible licensing model with competitive pricing, though costs may rise for extensive setups.
When I export logs into the application, workspace, log analytic workspace, and into Sentinel to read reports, I need to add storage, which increases the cost.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
The solution is considered expensive.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Azure Monitor provides comprehensive real-time monitoring, alerting, and analytics, enhancing security and scalability for seamless infrastructure management.
SolarWinds NPM provides intuitive network monitoring with advanced customization, scalability, and proactive alerts, suiting diverse business needs.
The alerting features definitely help in reducing operational downtime for my customers by allowing us to get notifications in advance and take active actions.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
I also appreciate the ability to measure feature activity, see what types of devices they are on, follow specific use cases, and measure the amount of traffic going to a particular application.
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Resource monitoring is essential.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Whenever any node is down in our network, whether it is a server or any network device, we receive information through email that the device is down.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The ability to customize the dashboard in SolarWinds NPM provides key benefits like saving time and money, and streamlining some processes.
Assistant Manager at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 2.3%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.5%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.5%
Azure Monitor2.3%
Other93.2%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Andy Rabern - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Telemetry insights have improved how I track user behavior and application performance daily
I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it does well. My perspective is more based on an Application Insights agent running on a service or an app service and sending the telemetry via the agent, and also doing the filtering of telemetry at the agent level so you are not having a ton of telemetry. I believe Azure Monitor does pretty much the same thing. I have also used tools such as New Relic, and New Relic is a much more robust tool, but that is a different product and you are going to pay for that. It is a different offering altogether. The subscription that we had at the time allowed for a couple gigabytes of telemetry during the month, and I believe that telemetry only lives for about two months. You have to experiment with it to see how much you want to pay. I was not really involved in the pricing. It was more along the lines of we were running up against our limits in terms of the amount of free telemetry or telemetry that we get with our subscription, and so we either needed to scale back or turn specific telemetry types off or do some more sampling. It is nice that those capabilities are there so that you can reduce the amount of telemetry. I cannot really speak to pricing but I do believe that it is somewhat reasonable for Azure Monitor. New Relic is pretty expensive, I believe.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it...
What is your primary use case for Azure Monitor?
I am a developer who uses Azure Monitor for telemetry of the applications that I work on. Application Insights is one of those tools, and I have also used other non-Azure products before. Currently...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.